


Face Never Yours for the Keeping

by yet_intrepid



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Gen, Prison Capitalism, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)'s Missing Year, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: It’s strange, Shiro thinks, as weariness claims him. It’s strange, how already he feels goodness rising in him again. How swiftly he’s fallen into the urge—no, the need—to protect the small being that breathes beside him.It’s strange, he thinks, because he already knows how badly it’s going to end.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 34
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	Face Never Yours for the Keeping

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, mind the tags. This isn't a happily-ending case of accidental baby acquisition. No other archive warnings apply. 
> 
> This fic is only a WIP in the sense that I meant it to be more fleshed out - it does reach the ending. But I was uhhhh hella depressed in grad school when I was writing this and it was honestly for the best that I let this go.
> 
> Title is from "Only the Young Die Good" by Saintseneca: _If only good ones die young / I pray your corruption comes / Swift like a thief in the night / Right I pluck my right eye right out._

This is how it begins: Shiro wakes to screaming.

He’s been in prison long enough now that, as much as he hates it, he usually just rolls over and goes back to sleep no matter how loud it is. His body is constantly demanding rest, and he’s learning not to give it up for something that, at best, he’ll be unable to fix. At worst, something that’ll get him punished.

But this time—this time he rolls over, yes, but then he sits up.

The screaming is different. It sounds like a kid. A baby, even.

Shiro’s stomach turns, thoughts rushing at him so fast he can’t tell them apart. He should and he can’t and he can’t and he should and—and the screaming is still going, high-pitched, a tiny roar.

The door to the mass cell is open. A couple of Galra block it, watching. Shiro watches, too, as the little figure in the middle of the floor upstretches shaking arms, and doesn’t stop screaming.

Shiro starts to weigh his options.

But then he sees it, a flicker of movement from the other side of the cell, and before he even processes why the particular shape is a threat, he’s moving. He’s across the room, right up in front of the door, and he keeps his head down, doesn’t make eye contact with the guards, as he sweeps the baby into his arms.

“Watch it,” growls the figure that was moving in on the baby. Shiro doesn’t know their name, but he knows their reputation well enough that it’s hard not to shudder. “If that thing keeps screaming, I’ll snap its neck. And yours, too.”

Shiro bares his teeth at the figure, growls in his throat. The baby screams louder, but Shiro can’t give any comfort yet. If he loses this faceoff, especially in front of the guards, he’s marked.

So he growls again. “You can try, bitch.”

They stare at each other a little longer, Shiro and the shadowy figure whose name he doesn’t know, and then the guards shake their heads and slam the door shut, breaking the standoff. Shiro makes his way slowly and deliberately back to the spot against the wall he’s managed to claim for tonight, and settles there.

Then he shushes the baby. Rocks them a little. Inspects them, too, by the dim purple light that never brightens or fades. They look like they’ve reached the same maturity level as a human near their first birthday, but they for sure aren’t human. Half-Galra, maybe? The feathered crown beginning to tuft across their head looks like a species that Shiro has seen before but can’t identify, and the face shape and fur—Galra, for sure.

Shiro doesn’t think too hard about it. He just bounces the baby, who’s warm and soft against his hands, until the screaming fades into whimpers. Then he curls up on his side facing the wall, tucks the kid against his chest for safety, and tries to sleep again.

It’s strange, he thinks, as weariness claims him. It’s strange, how already he feels goodness rising in him again. How swiftly he’s fallen into the urge—no, the _need_ —to protect the small being that breathes beside him.

It’s strange, he thinks, because he already knows how badly it’s going to end.

This is how it ends: the baby dies.

Shiro doesn’t have a fight the next day. He hasn’t had one in a while, and he’s starting to worry, because he thought he was doing okay. He was winning a lot. He wasn’t ending the fights too fast with too little show. He won another match against a big monster thing, too.

And it’s not that he likes the arena. But fighting, he earns more. He can make enough credits off one decent match to eat for three days. It’s terrifying, and he feels like shit about hurting other prisoners, but at the end of the day it’s easier than the work shifts. He always ends up with the bad supervisors for those, somehow—the ones that nitpick, the ones happy to cuff you hard for a stray glance, the ones who won’t pay the full credits amount for anything less than perfect work and demeanor. Shiro can spend twelve hours scrubbing bloody floors and still end up having to choose between enough water and enough food.

And now there’s the baby to feed. If he doesn’t get assigned a fight soon, things are going to get rough.

But Shiro can’t control that, so he does what he can: he takes off his ragged overshirt, rips it apart into a makeshift sling, and settles the baby on his chest. When the officers come to pick work crews, he gets in the required position. Hands on his head, he crosses his fingers like he’s a child himself.

One of the officers, one he doesn’t know, stops in front of him. “You,” she says. “Can you work fast?”

“Yes,” Shiro vows.

“Even with this runt attached to you?”

“Yes.” His voice doesn’t waver. He doesn’t let it.

“Fine,” she says, and beckons him forward into her crew.

This is how it ends: the baby dies. Not today, no. But the baby dies.

It’s when he’s busy working, lugging waste buckets from the cells to the room where they get emptied and cleaned, that Shiro notices the baby’s temperature.

Of course, by this point he’s no longer calling them “the baby.” Less than twelve hours since they met, and he’s already attached so hard that he’s named the little ball of warmth that snuggles listlessly against his chest.

So, it’s when he’s busy working that Shiro notices baby Sam’s temperature. Warm. Too warm, even by his guesses of what other species’ normal body temps might be. He stops in his tracks when he realizes it. No wonder baby Sam is so still. No wonder they barely open their eyes. No wonder they haven’t cried to nurse or be changed.

Shiro swallows hard against the knot that grows in his throat and, with an effort, forces himself to keep moving. There’s nothing he can do, not yet. There’s no way he’d be allowed to get any kind of food or water until lunch break, which isn’t so much a lunch break as it is a rest period of thirty minutes or so when those who can afford it purchase a half-ration of water or a piece of stale bread. Shiro’s not sure of his credits balance, not sure if he’ll be able to give baby Sam anything at the break, either. Maybe he can wring some sympathy out of another prisoner; maybe he can convince the officer to give him an advance. But he certainly can’t do much for Sam now.

So he keeps hauling the waste buckets, and he keeps whispering to the kid who weighs heavy against the straining fabric of the makeshift sling. He keeps making promises that they’ll be okay.

He knows he’s lying.

No matter how Shiro reframes his own actions, no matter how hard he tries to pretend he could’ve done better, this is how it always ends. Always, somehow, the baby dies.

At the break, Shiro sits on the floor and rocks baby Sam. The kid is heavy in his tired arms, but they’re also soft and warm, and it’s nice to worry about someone besides himself for once. Makes him feel like a decent human. And yeah, the likelihood is high that Sam won’t make it long. Even if they outlive this fever, even if Shiro manages to feed both himself and them—well. This is a Galra prison. Even if they live to adulthood, Shiro can’t convince himself that this kid will have anything besides a short and miserable life.

But that doesn’t change his urge to care for Sam now. It doesn’t change anything at all.

“Not your kid, is it?”

Shiro turns. The prisoner beside him, who is humanoid though short with twitching rabbit-like ears, is peering curiously at Sam.

“Not biologically, no,” Shiro answers. He keeps his voice level but hard. The prisoner doesn’t seem dangerous, but you never know. “But they’re mine now.”

The prisoner makes what is probably a skeptical face. “What the hell for?”

Shiro shrugs.

“You’re the Champion, aren’t you?” the prisoner goes on. “Your arena fights, I’ve never seen anything like them. Why saddle your career with a runt like this?”

“Hey,” calls a guard. “You two over there, shut up!”

On cue, baby Sam starts to cry.

“No,” Shiro mutters, “no, no.” He bounces and soothes and whispers, but it’s no good. Sam is screaming soon, wailing, piercing Shiro’s heart through with sorrow and the keen sting of fear.

The guard stalks over. “Quiet that runt,” he growls, “or I’ll do it for you. Understand?”

Shiro nods frantically. There’s only one thing the Galra mean when they say things like _I’ll do it for you_ , and it’s not good, it’s never good—

He checks the diaper Sam’s wearing. It’s damp, but not otherwise dirty; Sam clearly hasn’t had much to eat or drink lately.

The guard is still standing over him, glaring at the still-screaming baby. Shiro gets up his courage.

“Sir?”

“What?” the guard demands.

“Can I get some water?”

“You got the credits?”

“I think so,” Shiro says. “Please, just half a ration?”

The guard grumbles, but asks for his prisoner ID number. Then he pulls out a pad and charges Shiro’s account. Snapping for an attending prisoner who works with the food carts, the guard shakes his head.

“Like I said, if you don’t shut the brat up—”

Shiro nods again. Fear is lumpy and tight in his throat, and Sam is still crying. Heat radiates from their little body.

“Shhh,” Shiro murmurs, and hums some nonsense tune. He can’t remember the words or how he knows it, but it helps a little. Sam stops thrashing so much and their cries settle slightly.

When he gets the water pouch (a full ration, not a half, and he suspects the prisoner with the food cart will pay in more than credits for that), Shiro opens it carefully and dribbles some through the straw into Sam’s open mouth. Sam swallows it down greedily and Shiro keeps giving it to them, saving one small sip for his own dry mouth and another tiny bit to cool the baby’s face.

Please, Shiro thinks, as Sam drinks the last of the water. Please stay quiet. Please stay alive. Just for now, stay alive.

How long is _just for now_? Shiro thinks back later. He ought to have specified, while he was making improbable requests.

He makes it through his shift. Gets paid. Gets returned to a cell—not the mass one he was in earlier, but a smaller room, like the ones he used to share with Matt and Commander Holt. Shiro breathes in relief as he slumps to the floor, laying baby Sam down on the ripped-up shirt-turned-sling. He made it through his shift and the baby’s still alive. He has another ration of water and some porridge, and he didn’t get hit all day.

Shiro feels tears prickling at his eyes. God, but he’s been lucky today. And he knows it won’t last, because it never lasts, but still. He’s grateful, and he splits the water ration evenly between himself and the baby before giving Sam a couple bites of the food as well. Sam is still listless, though, and doesn’t seem to find the porridge appetizing.

“Come on, kiddo,” Shiro mutters. “I know it’s not yummy but it’s all I’ve got, okay? You’ve got to—no, come on, don’t spit it out!”

Baby Sam spits it out.

Shiro groans and tries to rescue as much of the food as possible, scooping it back into Sam’s mouth with his finger. Sam swallows this time, but when Shiro tries to give him more, he turns his head away.

Shiro’s tired. He gives in and eats the rest himself, because it’s been a long day. The food isn’t enough to get rid of the sharp ache in his stomach, though. He needs a fight soon, or neither he nor Sam will make it.

When he’s scraped and licked away every last scrap of food he has, Shiro curls up next to baby Sam and falls asleep.

He tells himself after that maybe if he had not gone to sleep—that maybe if he had not angered the guard—that maybe if he had done better or worked harder or faster—

He tells himself maybe, maybe—

He tells himself these things and they are lies.

This is how it begins: Shiro wakes to screaming. When it ends, it is Shiro who, waking, screams. It is Shiro, when the baby dies, who upstretches shaking helpless arms.

He is on his knees. In the small far part of him that can think still, he thinks: he knew how this would end, and knowing—shouldn’t that have changed something? If not the grieving, at least the hope?


End file.
